It has been about a week since I sent out the initial request soliciting
funds for a new server and such. Response so far has been pretty good,
judging by the number of envelopes in my post office box the last few days.
I have yet to open most of them, hope to get a lot of that done this coming
weekend. So I can't as yet offer any feel for the actual numbers involved
in this fund drive. There's also a bundle of email I have yet to answer,
so please be patient.
Chances are, though, that you all realize the hours I put in for the support
of the lists is somewhere between a quarter to a half of the time put into a
full time job, and have figured out a rough idea of your gross income for
1999. With each and every one of you having sent off a certified check for
1/4 of your gross annual salary, you can now rest assured that the lists will
go on as is. I'll be buying a vast expanse of Utah sagebrush soon, enough for
a 2 to 3 mile road racing course, a 5,000 square foot shop, maybe a 10,000
square foot storage warehouse, a zillion megabit net connection for Team.Net,
and so on.
Sorry, enough dreaming. Count on about 1 percent of the subscribers sending in
a donation, an average of twenty or so US dollars each. You know, I sometimes
get the feeling that some of the $5 and $10 checks represent a larger chunk of
the donor's net worth than the occasional $50 or $100 check. Part of the
reason I try to avoid lists of who gives what.
Anyway, what I expect we'll get out of this is maybe $1,500 to $2,000 for a
more powerful server, and another $1,000 or so to set up and sustain, for some
number of months, a decent network connection independant of the U of Utah.
The decision I'll have to make is whether I should stick with just upgrading
the Hewlett-Packard 730 HP-UX system that currently runs the email, web and
FTP services, or venture into the world of Intel processors and most likely
Linux. We shall see.
Anyway, those of you who have already responded please accept my heartfelt
thanks for keeping the spirit of these lists alive. For those of you who
would like to contribute but don't have the financial resources at the moment,
don't sweat it, you've got friends here. And those of you who let my first
request slip by, take note. Send contributions, be it in the form of a check
payable in US dollars, made out to the Fat Chance Garage, or the required info
to charge to a Visa or MasterCard account, or nifty T shirts, or ???? to:
Fat Chance Garage
PO Box 58333
Salt Lake City, Utah 84158
Plain old email is not secure or private, so I suggest you not send charge
card info to me in that manner. You can fax it to me at 801-355-5438, if
you wish.
Again, thanks to you all for making this endeavor what it is and shall be.
mjb.
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